


gentle heart but not acquainted

by lotesse



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Flash Fic, Kink Meme, M/M, PWP, WAFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-25
Updated: 2010-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 03:54:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: while in bed with Watson, Holmes is absolutely adoring and besotted, the opposite of his usually cold, calculating self.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gentle heart but not acquainted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ingridmatthews](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingridmatthews/gifts).



Watson cannot believe, in retrospect, that he ever could have thought – could have dreamed! - that Sherlock Holmes was a reasoning machine. That Holmes' reason is as perfectly fine as the most delicate instrument remains a manifest truth, but that word "machine" could scarcely be a greater lie.

*

It is simply monstrous that you do not care!"

And why, pray tell, ought I to? Will my care, as you call it, effect the outcome of the thing one iota?"

Perhaps not, but it might prevent you from risking yourself so very cavalierly. Holmes, the solution to a case is not everything. If you, or I, or the client perish in its pursuit, it would quickly become meaningless. You cannot go on living as if nothing but your need for answers matters."

It had been a particularly harrowing case, one that had pushed Holmes to the limits of his physical endurance and that had wrung both their hearts with pity and horror. Through sheer dumb luck they had both lived, and the girl was now safely returned to her sister's loving care, but Watson felt himself unable to return to his usual state of equilibrium. Instead he vibrated like an over-tightened violin string plucked by a careless hand.

When his angry words fell into silence, bleeding out his own feelings of reaction into the still dark air, he found himself at last able to perceive that Holmes was in a similarly nervous state, shaky and wide-eyed.

Watson may have breached the small breathless space between their lips first out of joy at the positive outcome, or relief that the case had not been Holmes' death after all, as he had feared it would be, or compassion for the other man's worn state, or affection for the righteous force that could wield the force of logic in such a noble way. It had not been the most considered of actions on his part; the successful resolution had loosened both of their customary inhibitions, and Sherlock Holmes kissed him back.

He had not known what to expect when they had tumbled into bed together. Had he thought it through, he would have been afraid. Sherlock Holmes was, after all, very often a direct cross between a madman and one of those insane hypothetical difference engines, icy and elegant and absolutely heartless. Watson had never seen him love before, not even, ultimately, in the affair of the King of Bohemia.

He knew now that he need not have worried.

It had been like opening a door, or throwing a switch, or pressing a trigger. Holmes had stiffened for the barest second of time, and Watson had braced himself for cold and superciliousness and sharply-wielded ironies, but then all at once Holmes had melted into the kiss like a happy child surrendering to sleep, pressing his cheek against Watson's neck once it ended with a contented sigh. His body bonelessly molded against Watson's own in an almost total embrace. Watson had been able to feel the flutter of Holmes' eyelashes moving against the sensitive skin at his own throat, and the sweetness of it had gone straight to his heart, transforming his difficult and prickly friend into a charming and amusing creature – into something eminently and unspeakably lovable.

Watson," Holmes had said, his voice resonant with depths of a gentle tenderness that Watson would have never even guessed at, "Oh, Watson, please."

Pressed against the soft clean-smelling sheets of Holmes' bed, trying to undo Holmes' braces while Holmes' fingers were busy with the buttons down the front of his own cotton shirt, Watson wondered at the face he'd thought he knew so well: he had never imagined such a warmth in the dark piercing eyes, such a voluptuous softness to the fine mouth, such an expression of open adoration and pure love on the patrician features. "Holmes," he groaned as his dear friend caressed his now-bare torso, trailing lines of fire across the expanse of his skin.

Holmes looked up, and Watson thought he had never experienced such intimacy as he felt in meeting his eyes in that moment. "Anything," Holmes said. "Anything for you, dearest Watson."

Their love-making did not last long; both were keyed up to such a level of tension and emotionality that their coupling was electric, hurried, unthinking, and briefly incandescent. The touch of Holmes' bare hand against his cock went off like a firework in Watson's mind, and Holmes' body burned in his arms like a brand, and by the time they quieted to lie panting side by side, Holmes had his eyes closed and his features covered over with an utterly attractive expression of peaceful delirium. His sardonic eyebrows arched over skin fine as paper, blushed with passion and smudged dark with weariness. Watson had never seen him so utterly still.

And then he had opened his eyes, and reached up an elegant long-fingered hand to trace a caress down Watson's cheek. "You are the loveliest thing in the world, I think," Holmes said.

Watson could not keep himself from bursting out: "For heaven's sake, Holmes, you are behaving much unlike yourself, and frankly you have me quite terrified."

I suppose I usually behave like a reasoning machine? Cool, detached, reasonable? Perhaps even heartless or cruel, if you do not approve of my actions or words? Oh, Watson, you need not look so surprised; I do read the things you write about me, you know, in all those little journals of yours. But, my dear Watson, if you knew – if you understood the difficulty I have had, ever since the moment I first saw you, in not telling you -"

"Hush," Watson said, stopping his mouth with a kiss. "I understand."


End file.
